>>141193787>Q:Was the reason for pruning/removing/killing off some side characters a request from the editor, or just a way to clean up the bloat, mix of both? PS I'm so glad Tommy got Thanos'ed.Ian: It was a mix of both. There was a kind of a general editorial directive to simplify and streamline things and there were a few characters on Mike's hit list. I do remember him saying just get rid of M. I'm like, "But we could explore some neat ideas." He's like "No, get rid of her." It's like, all right, I'm gonna make it sad if I can. And others I saw no particular reason to keep them around and if the direction was clean house, then let's clean house. Like the weasel gang of Nack knock-offs. Nack-offs if you will. Sure Jay Axer did neat designs for them but that's freaking Jay Axer. They didn't have any character to them so why? We didn't need them and the fandom is collectively one, that will hold on to every bit of minutia, and I'm just as guilty of that, so this was this was good for all of us folks. Other stuff like Sir Connery and all the various dark magic users who appeared once and did nothing afterwards. You've got so many magical things flying around when the chaos emeralds are supposed to be the central thing so some of it hurt, and some of it was like "oh, can I really do this? Am I allowed to do this?" because I was very young and inexperienced. Long answer short, it was a mix of both. It was some editorial direction and some of it was pointed direction. If I remember this correctly, the Darkest Storm arc resolved like 32 lingering plot points or something like that. It's an incredibly dense read. It is not new reader friendly. I have to go back and read it again, it may not even be a good read.